Random musings about London's history

The Hanwell Asylum

The Hanwell Asylum, aka the Middlesex County Asylum, is probably better known – if at all – as St Bernard’s. For some reason, I thought it was long-closed, like the Holloway sanitorium in Virginia Water. Or at least moved away like the Bethlem Hospital (“Bedlam”) in Lambeth, now the Imperial War Museum.

The Hanwell Pauper and Lunatic Asylum.

Not a bit of it. While out and about yesterday, we popped in to where we knew it to be, mainly to see – out of curiosity – what buildings remained. We quickly discovered two things: first, St Bernard’s Hospital, part of West London NHS Mental Health Trust is very much active. There were small numbers of patients hanging around on garden benches and wandering about. Some kept each other company. Quite a few were smoking. Is it safe to assume that even these poor souls are further tortured by anti-smoking? Second, many of the old buildings, particularly to the east (ie to the left in the above illustration) are very much extant, along with rather nondescript modern two-storey apartment blocks. While the old Holloway and Bedlam buildings are beautiful – uplifting even – overall St Bernard’s is decidedly grim and oppressive.

Pantopticon-style tower block, de riguer at the time in prison building theory as advocated by Jeremy Bentham.

The complex is fronted street-side (the very busy, dual-carriageway Uxbridge Road), by an imposing, ivy-bewigged, arched gatehouse, unoccupied by an employed keeper for many years, by the looks of it. A long driveway leads to the chapel. One can imagine wagons of supplies rolling up here having collected them from the nearby GWR siding, opened a handful of years after the asylum itself which came into being in 1831.

The Gatehouse.

The chapel.

This was very much the mid -19C time when the authorities undertook a determined policy of shifting prisons, asylums, workhouses and cemeteries to the outskirts. London was expanding at its fastest pace before or since: no room for criminals, the poor, the dead or the mad.

Not quite Victorian, then, strictly speaking by year of foundation, but very much so in many other ways, not least in our imaginations.

31 Responses

The correct word is ‘patient’. Not too difficult surely. Many people will experience psychiatric illness either themselves or through a close family member and the reference to ‘inmates’ is unhelpful.

When it opened St Bernards represented a new and more enlightened approach to psychiatry – not difficult really compared to what went before.

As a local resident, I would suggest that rather than looking at the hospital from the Uxbridge Road, you take a walk along the canal which runs behind the hospital. Also a great chance to look at the magnificent flight of seven locks at Hanwell

Thanks for putting me straight, Anna, happy to edit on this occasion. Thanks also for the tip on local walking, we’ll give it a go – Hanwell is a very interesting area. I was talking to a local person about an hour ago who says he thinks the Trust have plans to demolish the remaining old buildings (presumably not the chapel, though).

Fascinating. My partner remembers it well. He performed at an entertainment there in about 1960. The routine he performed was the Peter sellers/Sophia Loren Goodneess Gracious song. Afterwards many of he patients followed him round, believing him to be a real doctor.

This is a bit guessy on my part, but the design would suggest so. The model prison for this sort of thing was Millbank Penitentiary (now the site of Tate Britain), built only 15 years previously, following Bentham. The builder of Hanwell was one William Cubitt. Infuriatingly there were two men in the profession of this name at this time, and I haven’t figured out which as yet.

Hanwell actually demonstrates what can be termed as ‘moral architecture’, as was laid out by reformers such as the Tuke’s at the York Retreat. It bears little resemblance to the Panoptian architectural forms of Bentham, which are far more penitentiary in design.

Good evening,
I am sorry this is not really in the vein of which you have been discussing. My name is Martin Kennedy and my mother Margueritte Cunningham died in the hospital in 1978. I never knew her and have never met her so i am very interested to find out more about her last days alive. Does anybody know the best way to obtain records etc of patients
Kindest regards

Hello, Martin. Highly unlikely that records of this type would be in the public domain, especially being relatively recent, historically. I’d start by contacting the hospital administration and see what they say. Good luck.

Hello Martin, my great uncle died in the hospital in 1956. I would recommend contacting the City of London Metropolitan Archives who hold the archives for the hospital. Be warned though, they may not come up with much information – all patient records for my great uncle had been lost or destroyed and the only paperwork they could find on him was a record of him being admitted, a record on when he died, and a record of his funeral. Very sad that as a family we could not find out what happened to him during his time there.
Best of luck – I hope your search proves more fruitful!

My great aunt Edith was night sister there in the 1950s – she used to get to one end of the buildings to the next on her bicycle, she was usually at her most active at nights and just to think running a place like that then. I would love to know if staff records exist too. We do have a picture of her in her nurse’s uniform. 🙂

This paragraph from Wikipedia may help regarding burial records I have just found out my 6x great grandfather died at Hanwell in 1870 so came across your very interesting blog by accident Mike.

“Anatomy Act (1832)[edit]
The friends or relatives of a deceased patient were free to remove the remains for burial. Failing this, the deceased were interred in unmarked paupers’ graves in the hospitals burial ground. With the 1832 Anatomy Act, the body was first kept in a building called the ‘dead house’, on the west side of the burial ground (see diagram above). If unclaimed after 72 hours it could be sold to a licensed anatomy school. The Act also provided for the donation of bodies.

As autopsies on paupers did need require the coroner’s permission, autopsies became common at the hospital. From 1845 the results of these autopsies were recorded in detail by Dr Hitchman.[15] “

I hope its okay to post this as a bit of a help to family historians out there. this is part of a response I recently got from the London Metropolitan Archives who hold Hanwell’s records. It will help give an idea what you can expect.

“We hold the archives of Hanwell Asylum (which later became St Bernard’s Hospital). If you are able to visit us you are welcome to consult these records without prior appointment. Details of our opening hours, location and History Card registration are available on our website: http://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/lma.

We would suggest that you begin your search by consulting the register of male deaths 1865-1876 (H11/HLL/B/16/003) as this will give you an idea of when Abraham Toy was admitted to Hanwell. When you have that date, you can then search the male admission registers (H11/HLL/B/04/001-005). There is also an extensive series of casebooks which record in detail the nature of patients’ conditions and their treatment in the hospital (H11/HLL/B/20/001-043).

There may be other records that you could search for further details as this is a large hospital collection, and you can see the extent of the records on our catalogue at http://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/lma under the link to “Search online”. At the “simple search” page you can enter the reference code H11/HLL to see the catalogue for this collection. “

For I am Aspro, the editor that created the Wikipedia article and spent countless hours of research to put some flesh on the bones of this very ground braking institution. The comments here (and on other websites) leaves me feeling that, that effort was all worth while. Up until that article, the general public knew and could find out little about this institution’s advancements in the treatment of mental health care (pity the modern NHS is now suffering from amnesia).
If anyone has any historical documents, letters, photographs, etc., they can mention these on the article’s talk page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Hanwell_Asylum

If your ancestor died less than 100 years ago it would be difficult to have access to the patient records (for reasons of confidentially). However, as she past away in 1842 that in itself should not be a problem. There are three issues. (1)Were those records kept and did they survive? If they do exist they will either be in thehttps://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/things-to-do/london-metropolitan-archives/visitor-information/Pages/default.aspx
orhttp://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/.
(2)Your email enquires may not get any useful response but persevere (they get lots of emails).
(3) A personal visit may yield better results. Take along all the information you have. Even if your not a historian these places are worth visiting. Also, as a taxpayer these records are your records so you have every right to view them. Take along a digital camera so that you can make copies. Hope this helps in some way.

In 1973, l spent five months as a patient at st Bernards, Being of an inquisitive nature I and another chap investigated some of the basement and underground passages, we found some cells, with evidence of the past cruelties including, chains, whips and thumbscrews! Fortunately no remaining bodies, but a strange and cavernous place, some leading to areas of the hospital not normally accessible. The Cemetery Area, seemed to be filled with odd sunken areas, and although not wet, this area was dank and overgrown due to the close proximity of the Brentford end of the Brentford/Avon/Kennet Canal. (Incidentally an aqueduct, viaduct and road cross one another at the extreme south east corner!) RAH